Category: 10 Questions For:

Esme Vos who I interviewed in 10 Questions for (7): Esme Vos of Mapplr, met Forest and introduced us. So here is my 40ieth interview with the creator of a great product for hoteliers.

1) Who Are you?

My name is Forest Key. I’m the founder and CEO of a new company called buuteeq which makes a system for hotels to manage their online marketing. I’m a father of 2 great kids and together with them and my wife, an absolute travel junkie (have lived long term in Chile, China, Spain, and done many long extended trips throughout the world). I started my career in film and technology and was a editor and CGI artist for George Lucas’ company “ILM” – Industrial Light and Magic (yes, I actually worked on Star Wars and other blockbuster style movies, was a lot of hard work but a lot of fun). Together with another ILM guy I co-founded a company that made tools for the visual effects industry (my first experience as an entrepreneur)—our product “Commotion” was used on many of the most important movies of the era, including Gladiator, The Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, and the Star Wars prequels. More recently I was the product manager for Flash (I was responsible for designing many of the video capabilities in the platform) and then worked at Microsoft for 6 years in charge of marketing for various web development technologies, before leaving to start buuteeq.

2) What do you like about what you do?

With my current job I am blessed to have many of my favorite things rolled into every day of the work week—buuteeq combines my passion for travel, technology, and starting companies and working with great people. This is not by accident: I founded buuteeq because I wanted just such a combination, and am very happy to say that things are playing out to plan so far.

3) What don’t you like about what you do?

Well, up until a few weeks ago I would have told you that I hate having to spend so much time raising money for my business, because I spent a good part of the first half of 2011 raising cash for buuteeq so we could expand our sales organization to better sell buuteeq to hotels in far flung parts of the world—raising money is very time consuming and takes time away from actually running the business and looking after hotel customers’ needs. However, as of May we actually completed a $3.5m round of funding, and are now all set to get back to 100% focus on our actual business.

4) Please tell us all about your blog and your aims with it.

buuteeq’s blog aims to elaborate on digital and online marketing subjects that are intimidating and confusing to hotel owners. A lot of our blog of course will mention our product and service and how we specifically address digital marketing for hotels, but we know that to write a great blog we have to rise above pure “commercial-tainment” content, and I’m proud of the articles that we’ve been producing that cover subjects of Hotel SEO, Google Places, The Evils of Flash (for hotel websites), and other content that we can help the community to understand given our strong technical expertise in these areas.

5) Your top 3 destination experiences you’ve ever stayed to date and why?

Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia. This dry salt lake at 14,000+ ft (4000+ meters) of elevation is just incredibly beautiful—the horizon is filled with volcanoes, the sky is bluer than blue, and the white salt that pervades the ground forms an incredible image that is surreal and unique in my travel experiences. The 2-3 day jeep tour of the Altiplano, which covers the Salar itself as well as several amazing lakes that are dotted with pink flamingos and alpaca/llamas, is definitely at the top of my travel experiences.

Ranakpur Jain Temple, Rajastan, India. This Jain temple is the most beautiful temple of worship that I have seen—better than any Catholic church in Europe for sure. 100s of granite columns sustain this multi-story building, which you can traverse in your socks (no shoes allowed) while you contemplate the architecture and listen to the prayers from the many pilgrims. Great photographs are impossible to miss, so many lovely angles including those in the minds eye!

Anapurna trek, Himmalayas, Nepal. When I was just out of college I did a 3 week trek in the Himmalayas, “around Anapurna” route, which was such an indulgence! At the time I of course naively thought that being able to take that much time off to just hike in the mountains and stay at tea-houses would be a common occurrence in life—then adult responsibilities such as work and family intervened and I have yet to replicate the experience. I hope to make my boys back to this magical part of the world to complete the trek together once they are old enough for the rigorous hiking.

Huangshang (Yellow Mountain). Sorry, couldn’t pick just 3. Yellow Mountain is a super well known and developed national park for Chinese locals, but foreigners are clueless as to this wonderful playground of amazing paths built into the impressive vertical mountains. My wife and I did a 8 hour hike that was up and down and around the most amazing staircases, really something to be seen to be believed!

6) Your top 3 accommodations you’ve ever stayed to date and why?

LiAn Lodge, Guilin, China. This exotic lodge was the inspiration for my new business—the most beautiful hotel/location-for-a-hotel, with what was formerly a really bad website to market the property (the hotel now has a great website!) The 4 story building is built using traditional Chinese construction (no nails, just tongue and groove assembly of interconnecting timber!), and the views and sounds of nature at night are unsurpassed in my many years of travelling. It is not the most luxurious, or opulent—but the combination of classy design and amazing location make it the most unique.

Park Hyatt Seoul South Korea. This hotel is my favorite “traditional brand hotel”—the design of the rooms, especially the lovely bathrooms with rain showers and floor to ceiling windows out on the city, kept me coming back every few months during my two years living in Asia and working for Microsoft. I’ve shared this hotel with many friends who are passionate about design and architecture and we all agree, this is one very special hotel!

Elquimista Cabins, Valle del Elqui, Chile. I have to call this hotel one of my favorites because my family and I rented one of their cabins for 3 months and lived in the charming town of Pisco Elqui while I wrote the business plan for buuteeq. This town is in the middle of the Andes Mountains, near the Rio Claro valley which is home to wine and table grape producing farms that are surrounded by the drier than bone hills of the desert that surrounds the valley. A truly magical place on earth, and these 4 unique eco-cabins and the lovely proprietors were a wonderful place for my family and I to gaze at the valley from our porch and at the southern stars in the evenings.

7) Your top 3 most memorable food / wine experiences to date and why?

French Laundry, Yontsville. Took 5 years to get a reservation, amazing meal (my wife got sick—too much rich/cream, she doesn’t like French food in general)—but just the build up to the experience and the 5 bottle of wine that our party of 4 consumed during our 3 hour meal… very memorable!

Los Ceviches, Lima Peru. I love ceviche (fish and other critters from the sea, marinated in lemon juice), and when in Lima, this chain of cevicherias is a no brainer choice for huge plates of fresh, spicy, delicious ceviche.

Jin Din Xuan, Beijing China. Beijing has such amazing food choices, but this low-rent chain of dim-sum and “late night party food” has the best dish I’ve ever eaten, the “ranmien” noodles—basic noodles drenched in the spiciest “ma-la” hot sauce that you’ll ever want to eat. The mellow spiciness starts off warm in your mouth and will stay with you for 24hrs in your belly!

8) Your 3 worst destination/ accommodation /food experiences to date and why?

I don’t usually care to remember bad food or hotel accommodations, as I aim to cleanse myself as quickly as possible and move on. However, on thinking of this the first that immediately came to mind was the horrible meal and experience we had at Che Pannise, in Berkley California USA. This purportedly amazing restaurant was a bust for us—our friend who had travelled to San Francisco specifically to eat at this restaurant (she is a foodie) was heartbroken when her “vegetarian” option consisted of a plate of spaghetti with butter on it (I’m not kidding, that’s literally what she was given) as a main course! As for bad hotels—any hotel in Las Vegas, I’ve been to most of them on the strip, and they are all just horrible. No matter how shinny and new they are, Las Vegas hotels are just without souls.

9) Can you offer the readers 3 destination/ food / accommodation / things to do tips about the city you are currently living in?

In Seattle, the best breakfast in town is at Lola’s (famous chef owner, lunch and dinner are fine, but the breakfast is really remarkably good!), if you like oysters (and I do!) try The Walrus and the Carpenter which is a hot new place in seattle’s most fun walk-able old neighborhood (Ballard), and my favorite of the current batch of “mobile truck restaurants” (whereby the restaurant is in the back of a trailor truck, and parked in different neighborhoods from time to time) is the Rancho Bravo Taco Truck which has yummy Mexican fare. As for hotels, as with most locals, I know almost nothing about my local hotel market because I never stay in them nor do my friends and family (who stay with us)—however, I do know a few B&Bs that are both customers of buuteeq, and places that our employees frequently stay: the Bacon Mansion Bed and Breakfast, Bed and Breakfast on Broadway, and right near my house (and lovely views of Greenlake), the Greenlake Bed and Breakfast.

10) Any Question(s) you’d expected me to ask that you would like to answer?

I’m surprised you didn’t ask me what my favorite hotel/restaurant/city/etc. in Holland is?! My wife and I love Amsterdam and have been there 5+ times for vacations and business trips. I was there most recently with Microsoft for a team off site — we had the most fun doing various team activities in the city, including a night of cooking as a team (at a cooking school) which was a great morale event. The hotel we stayed in was crummy/mediocre, but it was right near the Anne Frank House in a great old neighborhood full of character.

My Take

A pleasure to meet you, @Forest, and an impressive result with your @buuteeq funding!

I noticed you lived 3 months in an adobe in Chile and couldn’t resist to pinch one of their photos. Adobe as eco building material has my special interest.

I’ve been bugging him for quite some time and am glad being able to present 5 Star Hotel Marketeer Josiah Mackenzie.

1) Who are you?

I’m a bon vivant passionate about travel, tea, writing, running, technology, hospitality, design, stories, startups, my hometown of San Francisco, my current city of Barcelona, and anything related to innovation and making the world a better place.

My background is in technology and software startups, but I’m working towards eventually opening a hospitality company in the near future. Now I’m taking my technology experience and using it to help forward-thinking people in the hospitality industry deliver better service and experiences to their guests. What I have done, am doing, and will do is the only way I know to blend all my interests.

2) What do you like about what you do?

I love talking with people who are on the front lines of innovation, and hearing about the projects they’re working on. For example, I’ve had some good conversations recently with Diego Sartori and Michael Levie of citizenM Hotels – and they just might be creating the coolest hospitality concept in the world right now. Watching them reinvent every component of a traditional hotel is fascinating: from the modular construction to how they publish a digital lifestyle magazine.

I like ideas, but I love action. I’ve been fortunate to work on interesting projects in very creative organizations, allowing me to continuously test theories and see what actually works.

Now I’m spending most of my time working with a very talented, dedicated, driven team at ReviewPro, lead by CEO RJ Friedlander. I’ve always enjoyed watching entrepreneurs in action, and RJ is one of the most dynamic executives I’ve met. I work as an industry analyst with them – watching and reporting on how social technologies are changing the way the travel industry operates. As frequent participant in both the consumer and supplier side of travel, this is an ideal position for me right now.

3) What don’t you like about what you do?

My philosophy is that if you’re doing work you love, you’ll never work a day in your life. That’s definitely true for me. I love what I do, and that makes everything easier.

4) Please tell us all about your blog and your aims with it.

I have a very simple goal: to become the most influential travel technology personality in the world. 🙂 To this end, I’m focused on writing stories and case studies of technology in action. Whenever possible, I prefer to highlight what’s working – instead of pontificating on theory.

I started Hotel Marketing Strategies in the summer of 2008 as just a way to share insights from the projects I was working on. Now, it’s grown to become the leading hotel marketing blog in the world. My rockstar editor Katie Clapp and I talk with people shaking up the travel industry, and then profile their work in blog posts and articles.

An example of this is my recent conversation with James Kinney, who has found live entertainment events to be the single best way for hotels to generate attention on the social web. If you hang out too long in typical social media marketing sites, you are more likely to see another article on “why you should use Twitter” – instead of a compelling case study that involves Cedric the Entertainer, Manhattan hotels, and 300% growth in social media activity.

5) Your top 3 destination experiences you’ve ever stayed to date and why?

Berlin – I used to live in Berlin, and it remains one of my favorite cities in Europe, if not the world. There’s an energy there that is hard to find elsewhere. I enjoy shopping and dining in the Prenzlauer Berg and Hackescher Markt areas.

Colonia, Uruguay – This can be done as a day trip from Buenos Aires, but it’s much better to stay overnight. On my first visit here, I rented a bike, got lost, and then found a beautiful, nearly deserted beach that was so unexpected that it felt like paradise. (Getting lost typically leads to the best travel experiences for me.)

Dubai– Some find Dubai to be artificial, but its hard not to be impressed by how audacious the developers are in this city. I find the architecture inspirational.

If I can add a fourth, it would be Paris. I’ve visited a handful of times, and lived here briefly in the past, but frankly wasn’t a big fan. But on a trip back there this Spring, I fell in love with the city for some reason for the first time. Paris is the new Paris.

6) Your top 3 accommodations you’ve ever stayed to date and why?

Witt Istanbul Suites in Istanbul remains my #1 hotel experience to date: Luxurious, modern, and exotic. Guests enjoy a privileged view over the city from rooms designed by Autoban. Founder and owner Tuncel Toprak is a genius, and doing exactly what I want to be doing very soon.

Tailor Made Hotel in Buenos Aires exudes a low-key vibe in a high-energy city. I enjoyed the minimalist design and very friendly service. Original founder Mariquel Waingarten understood what many modern travelers are looking for, and executed a simple concept very well.

I recently stayed at La Maison Champs Elysees in Paris, and was fascinated to see how the owners partnered with Maison Martin Margelia to re-launch the hotel. High fashion entering the hotel industry is an interesting trend I’m observing right now. Hugues Godard, Martin Soler and their teams are doing a great job with this property.

7) Your top 3 most memorable food / wine experiences to date and why?

Someone once told me that dining experiences are 50% about the restaurant, and 50% about who you’re dining with. 😉 I think that’s true, and fortunately I’m usually blessed with great dining partners. While I’ve had some extraordinary dining experiences around the world, I’m going to highlight some favorites in my hometown of San Francisco. San Franciscans get spoiled with some excellent New American cuisine with very fresh ingredients – places like Radius and Outerlands.

One of my favorite wine spots in San Francisco is Moussy’s – an underground wine bar & tapas place. When I’m in the SoMa district, District is another fun place.

As someone who could eat breakfast food for every meal, I recommend a true American breakfast at Dottie’s True Blue Cafe. Had some very inspiration breakfasts at this San Francisco institution, talking travel innovation with @Michael Hraba, @Lisa Demoney, @Henry Harteveldt and @Jacob Morgan.

And for a solid all-around lunch restaurant that never disappoints, I have to give a shoutout to Samovar Tea Lounge in San Francisco. Owner Jesse Jacobs is one of the restaurateurs I admire most in the industry, running his business in a very socially responsible way. The Yerba Buena gardens location is a hotspot for SF tech entrepreneurs, so when dining here you’ll be surrounded by people building the next Twitter or Facebook.

8) Your 3 worst destination/ accommodation /food experiences to date and why?

I try to forget about those!

Actually, I very rarely have terrible travel experiences. With the right travel research, it’s possible to avoid the worst places. I practice what I preach and use guest and customer reviews – like the ReviewPro City Rankings – extensively when planning travel, and they typically lead me to the best places in a new city. I’ve never had a bad experience staying at a hotel that was rated among the top 10 in a city.

9) Can you offer the readers 3 destination/ food / accommodation / things to do tips about the city you are currently living in?

I’m writing this from Barcelona, and the landmark W Hotel Barcelona is a hub for what’s cool in this city. The rooftop bar is one of my favorite places to bring visitors for a spectacular view over the Mediterranean Sea.

The El Born neighborhood is packed with interesting boutiques, cafes and restaurants. Definitely worth walking around at night or during the weekend.

Finally, I’m a huge fan of simple and stylish modern cafes. Anyone visiting Barcelona should check out Crusto, Cornelia & Co, Habuluc, Federal, Alsur Cafe, La Luna, and Princesa 23.

10) Any Question(s) you’d expected me to ask that you would like to answer?

You covered it all, but I love sharing tools I find helpful. To make this as useful as possible for your readers, here are some iPhone/Blackberry apps and that make my life as a writer and traveler easier, more efficient, or just more fun. (Note: I am not affiliated in any way with these companies)

● Evernote – makes it much easier to organize all the ideas floating through my head
● Instapaper – good for reading articles offline
● Tungle – makes scheduling appointments so much easier
● Instagram – easily share artistic photos
● TripIt – great for organizing your travel
● Path – sharing your life through photos with close friends
● Gowalla – making my phone a passport
● UrbanSpoon – my favorite way to find great restaurants

Finally, I love to meet people, so if anyone reading this wants to connect, you can find me on Twitter professionally @HmarketingHelp or personally @JosiahMackenzie.

¡Buen viaje!

My Take

In editing this interview I once more concluded that I myself didn’t follow you and your blog enough throughout the last two years and can only advise my readers to closely follow you, because you are very generous in sharing your experiences both in hotel marketing and living the good life!

I suggest that you come over and stay at Haagsche Suites once before you truly plunge into your hospitality adventure yourself to discuss those plans while enjoying a good glass of wine:-)

And continuing the 10 Q series in 2011 with Lara Dunston and Terence Carter. Those who wonder whether I’ve interviewed Lara already are correct: I did so in number 3. The reason for a new interview is quite interesting: Lara and Terrence are among the few travel bloggers who succeeded to make a living out of blogging last year. They traveled and blogged exclusively for Grantourismo.

Terence and Lara

1) Who are you?

I’m an Australian-born travel writer who works with her writer-photographer husband, Terence Carter. We moved to the UAE in 1998, to teach film/media/writing (me) and design websites (Terence), and we’ve been travelling the world ever since. Although we did some travel writing in the mid 90s, writing one of the first compact guides to Sydney when Terence ran a publishing department, we accidentally fell back into it around nine years ago, when Lonely Planet needed new authors for their Dubai guide and other Middle East titles. We ended up getting so much work that we had a year’s worth of commissions lined up for 2006, so we put our things in storage in Dubai and took to the road. After bouncing around the planet from one assignment to another, we began to develop Grantourismo.

Grantourismo – a contemporary grand tour aimed at exploring more enriching ways to travel – grew out of some of our frustrations with our work. Our idea was to travel more slowly and sustainably, stay longer in places, stay in rentals not hotels, connect more with locals, do and learn things, and wherever possible, give something back to the places we were visiting. We were lucky in that HomeAway Holiday-Rentals had a similar project in mind and were looking for a writer-photographer team, so they hired us! Getting paid to do your dream project? Life doesn’t get much better than that.

2) What do you like about what you do?

Aside from travelling the world and meeting incredible people, we love the flexibility and freedom that travel writing gives us. Our work takes us places, we can work anywhere, and while we essentially go wherever the work is, we can say yes or no to commissions. If we don’t like working with a particular person, we don’t have to work with that person again – when you work for a big organization you don’t have that choice. What we’ve loved about the last 11 months, working on Grantourismo, is that we’ve got to travel the way we most love to travel – staying in holiday rentals for two weeks at a time, really settling into a place, and learning to live as much like locals as we can; connecting with local people and finding out what they do and how they live their lives; and doing and learning things ourselves, from learning how to play in a gamelan orchestra in Bali (Terence) to learning the secrets of making pierogi in Poland (Lara).

3) What don’t you like about what you do?

The hours – we’re essentially working from the time we wake until the time we sleep, seven days a day. We normally take a few days off at Christmas, though we didn’t this year. The pace of travel – two weeks in a place might seem like a lot when the average person spends just 1-3 days in places when they travel, but we’re not on holidays, we’re working. So as well as discovering places and meeting people, we’re busy looking for stories, planning, doing interviews, writing posts for the site and stories for other publications, uploading photos, editing video, interacting on social media, and coordinating our travel – every single day.

Before Grantourismo we used to get frustrated with the whole hotel check-in/check-out process, it all seemed so tedious and time-wasting, but after 11 months we’re getting a little tired of moving house every two weeks. It’s impossible to travel light when you do what we do – in addition to a bag each of personal things, we both have laptops, I have a carry-on bag of books/reference materials we’ve collected on the way, and Terence has a bag of camera gear, plus a tripod/lighting case, and now he has a saz too! – travelling for one year and all four seasons is very different to a six- or even 12-week trip. We’re constantly paying for excess luggage, and getting frustrated by the fact that most trains aren’t equipped for people with luggage and many train stations don’t have elevators. But then, without it, we couldn’t do our jobs as well as we can.

4) Please tell us all about your blog and your aims with it.

Grantourismo is a place for us to chronicle our grand tour and to promote slow and sustainable travel, experiential travel, local travel, and the idea of living like locals by staying in holiday rentals. On a daily basis, we’ve been uploading stories and Terence has been producing stunning galleries of images and videos. We’re writing about the places we’re staying, the people we’re meeting, and the things that we’re doing and learning. We’ve stayed in everything from a traditional cone-shaped trullo in Puglia to a beach house in Costa Rica. We’ve talked to chefs, winemakers, artists, musicians, filmmakers, fashionistas, and scientists. We’ve gone hiking, bird watching and game watching. We’ve learnt about wine and learned to cook lots of things. We’ve learnt everything from bead-making in Cape Town to making offerings in Bali. We’ve visited Masaai villages, Rio favelas, and Cape Town townships. We’re hoping our stories about those experiences inspire travellers to travel in the same way. We’ve also been recruiting travel writers/bloggers to help us spread the word – by holding monthly competitions with amazing prizes (including holiday rental stays, cameras tours, guides, travel notebooks, CDs, etc) where entrants have to write a post on one of our themes.

5) Your top 3 destination experiences you’ve ever stayed to date and why?

That’s really tough, as there are so many, so I’ll focus on the last year only – although it’s impossible to put them in order!
1. Cape Town – where we did a lot of tours into the townships with sustainable travel companies, and met some extraordinarily inspiring people for whom life is very hard and the only way to make it easier is through their own initiative and creativity. Sustainable tourism is also helping.
2. Kenya – while our accommodation at Diani Beach was disappointing, it made a great base for doing safaris and visiting villages. Once again, the highlight of the trip was the people we met in the villages as much as the phenomenal amount of wildlife we saw on the game drives.
3. Austin, Texas – where we really immersed ourselves in the live music scene. We met lots of musicians who gave us great tips on where to go and what to see and went to see live music every night. It’s a very laidback city and the people are super-friendly and that was very appealing. The Tex-Mex and Mexican food is also terrific.

6) Your top 3 accommodations you’ve ever stayed to date and why?

Again, so many, so we’ll focus on this year…
1. Costa Rica – where we had two spectacular houses at Manuel Antonio – one open house (and by that we mean there were few walls!) overlooking the jungle canopy – families monkeys would literally troop through our home every day! – and house another down on the ocean, where we literally stepped out of our garden and we were on the sand and the national park which was just a short stroll along the beach.
2. Bali – where we lived in a beautiful villa in a traditional Balinese style, with swimming pool, on the edge of a small village surrounded by lush green rice fields. We would walk into the village and it would take just seconds before people were saying hello, introducing themselves, and even strolling with us. It was also a great location from which to do trips to Ubud, or go to the beach, just 10 minutes away.
3. Puglia – a traditional conical-shaped trullo in the countryside outside of Alberobello, which was not great in terms of working (the best internet access was in an olive grove!) but was a wonderful experience – it was very charming and rustic, we had our own pizza oven outside the house, and we rode bikes down country lanes.

7) Your top 3 most memorable food / wine experiences to date and why?

1. Tokyo – where we lived in a local neighbourhood with several brilliant eating areas on our doorstep and countless others a short train ride away, so we were able to try everything and anything we could devour. We realised that there is so much more to Japanese cuisine than sushi, which, surprisingly, we only had once during the two weeks.
2. Venice – which for us is one of the finest eating cities in Italy, although Venetian cuisine is greatly misunderstood and most visitors to Venice don’t enjoy the food because they succumb to the temptation of eating at a tourist restaurant on the Grand Canal. In Venice, we always get our tips from chefs, so every meal is a great one. We got to shop at the Rialto markets or organic markets every day, we did a cooking course with a Countess, and we learned about Veneto wines on a wine-bar hop with a sommelier.
3. Barcelona – which is one of the world’s great gastronomic capitals. There we stayed in the (very local) Gracia neighbourhood, which is surrounded by so many of the cities best restaurants. We probably only ate tapas a few times, because for us what makes Barcelona special are these tiny restaurants called bistronomics that are producing some of the most creative contemporary cuisine on the planet.

8) Your 3 worst destination/ accommodation /food experiences to date and why?

1. DESTINATION: Zell Am See, Austria – it was wonderful for Terence who was snowboarding every day, but it’s not a great winter destination for someone who doesn’t do winter sports. I was determined to find things for the non-skier/snowboarder to do in winter but it was difficult. There’s so much more available in summer.
2. FOOD: Costa Rica – while we loved our accommodation, the scenery, the wildlife, and the people, the food was disappointing – not a lot of variety, bland, and expensive to eat out.
3. ACCOMMODATION: Diani Beach, Kenya – again, we absolutely love the people and the wildlife, and, better managed, our accommodation could have been wonderful, but it wasn’t. We stayed in a traditional-style ‘cottage’ in sweltering heat and humidity, with a broken fan, a mosquito net with holes in it, a toilet that didn’t flush properly, and an unhygienic kitchen.

9) Can you offer the readers 3 destination/ food / accomodation / things to do tips about the city you are currently living in?

I’m writing this from Krakow, Poland.
1. DESTINATION: Walk – walk everywhere and all over! It’s a wonderful city for walking. Walk the Old Town, walk around Wawel Castle, walk the Jewish quarter, and walk along the waterside.
2. FOOD: Eat pierogi – everywhere and every kind. My favourite – the Russian style – is at Chlopskie Jadlo which is decorated like grandma’s cottage.
3. ACCOMMODATION: Rent a big old apartment – make sure it has creaky floorboards and lofty windows in a grand old building to get the full Krakow experience, as well as a decent kitchen so you can buy fresh pierogi and cook it at home too!

10) Any Question(s) you’d expected me to ask that you would like to answer?

What next, after you complete the Grantourismo trip?
We’ll finish our yearlong grand tour at the end of January – just one month to go! We’ve already been invited to speak about the project as it relates to wine tourism, in Porto. After that we’ll return to Australia via Dubai where we’ll take a short break before write a book about the experience. Grantourismo, as a site and project, will continue in a slightly different form. No more yearlong trips but we’ll continue to do shorter trips, experiences and activities, to continue to promote local travel, slow and sustainable travel, experiential travel, and voluntourism – as the project was as much about making our work as travel writers, as well as travel, more enriching and more meaningful.

My Take

Glad to have you again Lara! Curious to see your take on Tnooz and to see the take of HomeAway on this experiment. If not skiing in Zell am See, I would have left Terence there and visited Salzburg or Munich for two days:-)

Continuing the series with Martin Schobert of tourismusdesign

1. Who are you?

Traveling and innovative ways of communication fascinate me. I have been working in tourism for more than 13 years and published more than 4.500 tweets about experience-, communication- & service- design in travel & tourism and two Social media guidelines, Travel 2.0 Austria and Travel 2.0 Reloaded for the Austrian Travel Industry.

“How to communicate a touristic product” has been my main experience by working for Austrian National Tourist Office for almost 12 years. After different marketing jobs in Vienna and Paris I have been heading the marketing- and pr-team at the domestic market for 6 years. The following 3 years I have been Head of Research & Development leading the teams “Internet Strategy”, “Tourism Research”, “Business Intelligence” and “IT Service & Support”. In this capacity I have been responsible to develop the worldwide online- and social web strategy of the Austrian National Tourist Office.

Sharing my knowledge as speaker at international conferences in travel & tourism like ITB Congress, FVW Online Marketing Day, Enter, US Travelcom, Eyes for Travel Social Media Summit or the ITS International Tourism Symposium is my passion, as well as guest speaker at different universities in Austria and lecturer at University of Applied Sciences Vienna.

I am managing director and co-founder of tourismusdesign, a consultancy for communication and experience design. We assist touristic organizations to develop their online branding, online PR and – important in the era of social web – to improve brand attraction points or create memorable outdoor-experiences for travelers. Our secret: If touristic experiences are likeable, shareable, linkable and easy to remember our guests will act as spokesman of our companies and spread the messages of our brands and products…
We currently engage in product development of touristic brands, experience design in travel areas and alpine sceneries, service design and optimizing the “customer journey” of travelers and coaching the travel industry to communicate efficiently to guests & partners (by focusing on storytelling, online-PR, social media design).
Simply great: We started in March this year and have already lot’s of big and international players in the tourism and service business as customers of our “tourism design company”.

I am married, proud father of two children, living and working in Tulln, Austria – a fantastic country, full of remarkable experiences in alpine sceneries and cultural heritages in our cities.

2. What do you like about what you do?

I love to be a temporary external employee of touristic organizations. Sometimes just for a workshop, sometimes as an online expert for a couple of days to develop an online communication strategy or innovative ways of doing Public Relations. And then – two days later – I discuss with my colleague (she is a landscape architect with a couple of experiences in touristic development projects) how to improve experiences of a specific touristic destination in Europe. Guest-centric, sustainable and service-oriented! It’s simply a great job!

3. What don’t you like about what you do?

If my partners or potential customers just are talking around the topic. If they want to use our knowledge and experiences they should say it. If they only want another offer to compare with their existing suppliers it is also ok and they will get one. But I do not like if someone has no idea how to develop and takes our time and money just to grab some ideas.

4. Please tell us all about your blog and your aims with it.

There is a simple goal: To blog (in German) and tweet(in German and English) to share our knowledge in our fields of experience: innovative ways to communicate touristic product, optimization of touristic services and creation of meaningful, remarkable experiences while travelling outdoor destinations. Because we know: if we share our knowledge, the demand to it will increase …

5. Your top 3 destination experiences you’ve ever stayed to date and why?

1) Where the reef meets the rainforest – Port Douglas, Great Barrier Reef, Australia. At no other point in my life I had the possibility to experience two Unesco Nature Heritage at one point. And – at the hotel I stayed there where fresh mangos from a tree which fell “in your mouth” while swimming at the pool – amazing …

2) Cabo da Roca – for a long time the most western point in my life. It is fascinating to discover portuguese tradition in Lisboa, one hour later watching youngstars at praia do guincho, one of the most popular surf-hotspots in Europe and 15 minutes later to visit this special point for a European – the most western point of Europe where lot’s of seaman started to their trip to the unknown …

3) Each time new it is fascinating to have a 360 degree alpine panorama in front of your feet while exploring the fantastic glacier platform in Sölden, Tirol, Austria. Especially because you did it by ski with a blue sky on a sunny and warm winter day at the end of March / begin of April. Austrians call this special variety of winter-sports “sun-skiing”. Magic.

6. Your top 3 accommodations you’ve ever stayed to date and why?

1) The Standard Hotel, Los Angeles. The most strange hotel I ever stayed. Great. If you explore their website, you know why …

2) A hut for ten people friends in the tyrol mountains near Lienz, Eastern Tyrol, situated in a wood, 50 meters beside the slopes, equipped with a fireplace, a finnish sauna…

3) Olympic Villas, Oia, Santorini (Thira), Greece. 200 meters above the “caldera” and the agean sea. Unforgatable sundowns and a real experience when busses with tourists left after that …

7. Your top 3 most memorable food / wine experiences to date and why?

1) Just visit the “Wachau” Valley along the Danube in Lower Austria at Spitz. Walk up to the “Red-Door”-viewpoint on the hill upside and open a fresh bottle of a Riesling Smaragd, Singerriedl (alternative Grüner Veltliner Rotes Tor) from the famous vinemaker Hirtzberger. A firework in your mouth and heart while enjoying the wine and the scenery …

2) Discovering an italian food market in Ancona with the former austrian travel magazine “Reisemagazin” in my hands, tasting a breathtaking (because spicy) sausage. The memorable experience wasn’t the food. It was the joy of the marketer who remembered the interview and was happy about his fotostory in the magazine …

3) Life is too short and beautiful to drink bad wines. My favorite wine I ever drunk: Marienthal, Blaufränkisch (red), Ernst Triebaumer, 2004.

8. Your 3 worst destination/ accommodation /food experiences to date and why?

I prefer to remember positive ones, everybody knows how to make bad experiences. So – don’t do that!

9. Can you offer the readers 3 destination/ food / accomodation / things to do tips about the city you are currently living in?

1) Sodoma, Tulln – best “Wiener Schnitzel” of Austria (recommended by lot’s of food-journalists)
2) Der Floh – Langenlebarn – one of the best fish-meals in the country (member of jeune restaurateurs du monde)

3) The best way to discover Lower Austria is doing a bicycle tour alongside the Danube, one of the largest rivers in Mid-Europe. Certainly you have to stay in Tulln (I suggest Hotel Nibelungenhof and visit the Egon Schiele Museum, one of the most important painters of the 20th century, who was born at the railway station here (you can visit the room where he was born).

10. Any Question(s) you’d expected me to ask that you would like to answer?

No

My Take

Thank you very much Martin. I’ve many notes to compare but save them for our next meeting or for Twitter:-)

Great to continue the series with two real nomads, Craig (@Craig_Martin) and Linda Martin of Indie Travel Podcast, and who especially during the start up phase of TBEX have put tremendous effort to gather several of our fellow travel bloggers over there.

1) Who Are you?

We’re Craig and Linda Martin, two Kiwis who started traveling the world in early 2006. Some of the year we teach English, but most of the time we travel wherever we want, creating travel media like stories, videos, photos and audio podcasts.

We host one of the world’s best independent travel podcasts at Indie Travel Podcast and use our network of creative travellers to create a range of media through our business, Indie Travel Media Ltd. We’ve also started publishing digital books, like the Art of Solo Travel.

2) What do you like about what you do?

We love being able to visit dozens of countries each year; being able to spend as much or as little time in each as we wish.

We can work from a café in Berlin or a beach in Vietnam with equal ease (and equal problems!), or pop home to New Zealand for a bit.

The people we meet along the way are definitely the highlight of travel, closely followed by the wine we drink. There’s some thing really special about dropping in on an old friend after a few years away from each other.

3) What don’t you like about what you do?

At the moment our business is quite young, and with that comes problems: business strategy, sales and marketing are not our strong points, so we sometimes struggle to allocate enough time to those aspects… They’re not so fun! As you might expect, cash flow gets a bit tight at times too.

We’re much more adept at the creative and people-focused side of things!

4) Please tell us all about your blog and your aims with it.

Our flagship site,Indie Travel Podcast is an online home for long-term travelers, digital nomads and people on gap years, sabbaticals and career breaks.

We help people to travel in an independent, socially responsible and culturally engaged way. We focus on real cost-saving and practical advice for people who are preparing for and taking part in mid- and long-term travel.

We also run several other sites, including Must Learn Spanish and Make Money Travel Blogging.

5) Your top 3 destination experiences you’ve ever stayed to date and why?

That’s tough I’d have to pick:

1. Walking the Camino de Santiago in northern Spain. The simplicity of this hike/pilgrimage walk was something very special. We felt at home every step of the 1,000 kilometer journey.

2. Road-tripping through New Zealand. Travelling New Zealand by car or camper van is an amazing experience: friendly people, amazing wildlife and vistas, and great food and wine.

Chachapoyas found at Disclose.tv

3. Exploring three towns in northern Peru – Trujillo, Chiclayo and Chachapoyas. I’m sick and tired of hearing about the tourist-ridden Machu Picchu. This was a welcome break from crowds of tourists and offered some of the most amazing pre-Inca cultural experiences we had in South America.

6) Your top 3 accommodations you’ve ever stayed to date and why?

1. Krumlov House, a small hostel in Cesky Krumlov. This was one of the most beautiful hostels we’ve ever stayed in, both in terms of the staff and the light wooden interiors. The setting, in one of Europe’s prettiest towns, certainly helps.

2. Casablanca Hotel, New York. We stayed at the Casablanca during the Travel Blog Exchange conference earlier this year. It was an expensive splurge, but very well-priced for New York. Staff were excellent; complementary and extensive food and wine were served every afternoon; and the location, just meters from Times Square, was perfect.

3. A Spaceship. Not the kind that flies into space, but the New Zealand campervan made from a people-mover. Sleeping between the mountains and a lake while the snow fell, and waking up on the beach were two very special memories.

7) Your top 3 most memorable food / wine experiences to date and why?

While in the tiny town of Sankt Anna am Aigen in the south of Austria, we managed to have two very special nights in one week. On the first, everything in town was closed, so we walked, by the light of the moon, down the hillside and through the vines to reach a farmhouse restaurant. There we feasted on cold-cut meats, cheeses, pickles and bottle of local wine.

Later that week, we attended the Junker Festival, where dozens of local wine-makers presented their =93young=94 white wines. This is a tradition in the region and, while Junkers might cost several euros a glass in Vienna, I think we paid six euros for entry, and that was all. It was an amazing week.

I would be remiss not to also mention our days in Champagne, where we were hosted by a multitude of high-ranking people and walked away with some very nice vintage wines.

8) Your 3 worst destination/ accommodation /food experiences to date and why?

I try not to remember those. Bucharest, La Paz and Sankt Polten have especially failed to excite us.

9) Can you offer the readers 3 destination/ food / accomodation / things to do tips about the city you are currently living in?

I’m currently on a flight between Barcelona and Vienna so..

1. The sandwiches on Vueling flights are really small. The croissants very dry. I don’t recommend them.

2. Sitting on the right hand side of the plane during a morning flight allows the sun to come right in the window and warm you up. Sit on the left side if you want to avoid that.

3. If you have longer legs (say you’re around 160cm tall or more), try not to sit behind someone who’ll recline their seat. It’s quite painful.

10) Any Question(s) you’d expected me to ask that you would like to answer?

Apart from travel and blogging, our current passions (or, rather, preoccupations) are learning Spanish (for Linda) and playing chess (for Craig). We’re slowly getting better at both.

Our newest online project is MatadorU review, which looks at the MatadorU writing and photography courses. We’re also working on the final manuscript for a free ebook on how to travel the world like us, and brainstorming another called the Art of Couples’ Travel to complement Stephanie Lee’s Art of Solo Travel.

Craig and Linda on the Line of Capricorn, near Antofagasta, Chile

My Take

Thank You Craig and Linda. It was great fun meeting you recently and taking you for a ride along the Dutch river Vecht where the well to do traders of our Golden Age (17nd Century) used to have their country houses, and for a bite at a “Beach Club” at a lake (Loosdrechtse Plassen) where I took your portrait:-)